A locomotive is a specialized train vehicle which provides immense power in order to move a train. For example, locomotives weighing more than 400,000 pounds and having more 4,500 horsepower are common today. Although locomotives possess such power, it is often desirable in the train industry to transport such a large quantity of goods that the power of a single locomotive is insufficient to move the train effectively. In such cases, multiple locomotives are coupled together in order to combine their power and move the train. Generally a team of locomotives is termed a "consist" with one locomotive being a master locomotive and the other locomotives being slave locomotives.
Traditionally, throttle and brake control of slave locomotives was relatively cumbersome due to almost exclusive use of electromechanical throttle assemblies in locomotives. However, electronic control systems have recently been introduced to the art which advantageously provide two way wireless master-slave communication as disclosed by Roselli et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 5,570,284. The art, however, is still troubled with two problems.
First, without intimate knowledge of the territory, the engineer will have difficulty optimizing throttle and brake settings to anticipate the dynamics of control situations in the territory which lies ahead of the train. Second, although slave control is now easier to perform, due to sheer complexity, engineers are generally provided with limited options for slave throttle and brake control. Generally, an engineer has the option of setting the controls in the master locomotive which setting is then automatically matched by the slave locomotives. Alternatively, the engineer may set the master locomotive control settings and slave locomotive control settings independent from the master locomotive throttle setting. However, it has been generally impractical or undesirable to set slave locomotive control settings independent of other slave locomotive control settings.